Day 14 of 28...still

Another delay...we were told we would have to wait until Monday to check the blood levels again. If they are ok, then Sebastian can continue with the therapy. His white cells were in range yesterday, but his neutrophiles (a special kind of white cell that fights infection) were too low, but only by a little bit! They were at 980, and they need to be above 1000.

We can rule out that Sebastian will be able to go back to pre-school in December now, and we are hoping he can go back on Jan. 2nd. He is already asking to go back to "kindergarten", and that he's already waited so long! At least Christmas will offer him some entertainment.

Stella is trying to pull herself up in the playpen; she hasn't succeeded yet, but is close. Still no tooth!

Day 14 of 28

We had our clinic appointment yesterday. Everything was ok, Sebastian is fine, but his white blood cells are a bit too low for him to have received the chemo, so we have a delay. The chemo will make his counts drop pretty fast, so they want a "buffer" amount of white/red cells and platelets before they go ahead with the infusion. So I will keep writing "Day 14 of 28" until we have the go-ahead to continue on to the Day 15 protocol.

Thankfully, we have started the first reduction in doseage of steroids. Sebastian is eating ALL the time and is moodier than last week. He is soooooo puffy, and waddles around like a very pregnant woman with a huge stomach. I hope by the end of this week, those side effects will start to go away a bit. He wakes up in the night to eat, at least twice. Sometimes we have popcorn or crackers next to his bed so he will eat, and then go back to sleep on his own without waking anyone up. Michi's mom was here the past four days, and she was a great help. She was cooking rice, spaghetti, whatever the little guy wanted - and at all hours of the night.

Still waiting for Stella's first tooth!!!

The demise of our snowman.


Before going on our walk outside today.

Turkey Day

I just got on the Yahoo homepage, and realized it was Thanksgiving! I can't believe I forgot. All my friends and family will be eating turkey today, maybe some pumpkin pie, and gettting ready for a big shopping day tomorrow. Hi all!

Not much else to report here. Yesterday we had to make an emergency sushi run because Sebastian HAD to have cucumber maki. It was pretty cold outside, but we took a walk. I pushed Stella in her stroller, and Sebastian pushed Miss Ducky in his little stroller. Today Sebastian said he wants a birthday cake - maybe I will bake something and we can pretend it's Miss Ducky's birthday.

Day 9 of 28

Yesterday Sebastian went to the clinic for another day of infusions. His blood counts were fine, actually quite high considering his chemo from last week. Yesterday he received doxorubicin and vincristine, and he continues to take the steroids. Everything went fine, he is just a bit tired like usual, and the food cravings continue. For breakfast he had chicken nuggets, toast with jam, hot chocolate, popcorn and wanted scrambled eggs, but I talked him out of that one.

The next clinic appointment is next Monday. Until then we continue to be stuck at home, trying our best to keep entertained and keep our sanity! :-)

Day 7 of 28

Not much to report here. Sebastian's food cravings dominate our day, and today Michi made a run to the movie theater around the corner because he wanted popcorn. Yesterday he said he wanted to eat salt. I said he couldn't eat just salt - that it's unhealthy. He said then he wanted to put salt on "something" and then eat it. So in the end I gave him a piece of bread, he sprinkled salt on it, ate half of it, and then turned up his nose and said it tasted gross.

Tomorrow is our next clinic appointment. I am interested to see how his blood values are, and if they took a big dip from last week's chemotherapy.

The snowman on our terrasse.

Stella is getting a bit tired of sitting in the snow.

Day 5 of 28

Today we woke up to lots of snow! And it's still snowing. We will try to make a snowman on our terrasse today.
Sebastian had some weird cravings for breakfast. Notice the roll with Nutella (it's a chocolate/hazelnut spread) and a slice of cheese on top!

Day 4 of 28

Not much to report. Sebastian slept a lot more than normal, and was quite pleasant today. No roid rage outbursts. Stella, on the other hand, was a little whiney. And feeding her is becoming quite an ordeal. She likes to bat the food off the spoon, and is distracted by everything around her. It takes FOREVER for her to eat her lunch.

Guess what we had for dinner? Chicken nuggets! Yuck, I am already grossed out by them.

Day 3 of 28

Check another day off. Sebastian is taking his medicine a bit better now. The worst is at night when he is tired, and just doesn't want to bother with anything. He had noodles again at night, but he only wants to eat the tri-colored "butterfly" noodles. He also wants tofu (he likes it in miso soup), so let's see if I can make it taste just like the Japanese restaurant here around the corner.

Day 2 of 28

Not much happened on Day 2. Sebastian started asking for noodles and cheese. He is a bit tired, has some grey circles under his eyes, and had a couple of toy kicking episodes (aggression from the steroids), but in general he is in good spirits.

He doesn't like to take the medicine that protects his stomach (called Ulcogant, it's like liquid Zantec), and it made him throw up yesterday. I think he mentally psyches himself out that it tastes bad. Well, we had to find a way around that, because he has to take it three times a day. I started letting him pick out food coloring to make it different colors, and so far that has worked. (Thanks for the tip, Kim).

Day 1 of 28

We started our last block of intensive chemotherapy yesterday. Everything went fine. Sebastian received an injection of Vincristine, a one-hour infusion of PEG Asperaginase (luckily with no allergic reaction), and a one-hour infusion of Doxorubicin. He also started taking the infamous steroid tablets again. We will soon welcome the moody chicken nugget monster into our house. The freezer is stocked and ready.

We are all anxious to get through this last chemo block. We are taking it day by day, with the mindset that each day we are closer to the end. Hopefully Christmas will be a time to recover, and then the new year can start with fun kindergarten and me going back to work a bit.

Here are some pictures of the last week. I'll probably be posting more since we will be at home the next four weeks, more or less. Thanks to everyone for the nice emails and well wishes!

Sebastian in the Burgarten last weekend.


Sebastian and Kaya.

Sebastian and his homemade tool belt - all you need is a little bit of masking tape!

The first snow of the season - it already melted the same afternoon.

Stella...working on those teeth. We're still waiting for the first one to surface!

How low can she go?